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Turmantas

In Yiddish, Turmont

Written by Dov Levin

Translated by Shaul Yannai

A small town in the Zarasai (Ezhereni) district in northeastern Lithuania, one km from the Latvian border and 14 km east of the district city of Zarasai. Turmantas is first mentioned in historical sources in 1789, as an estate that belonged to the Russian scientist, Voroviov. A train station was built in Turmantas when the railway line between St. Petersburg and Warsaw was constructed in the middle of the 19th century. Since then, a small urban settlement developed in Turmantas.

About 200 residents lived in Turmantas and among them a few dozen Jewish families. The number of Jews in the town declined gradually due to difficulties in earning a living and other reasons. Only a few families remained in Turmantas at the end of the period of Independent Lithuania (1938).

At that time, the entire population of Turmantas was about 300 people. In the summer of 1941, after Germany conquered Lithuania, the fate of the remaining Jews of Turmantas was the same as the fate of the Jews in the surrounding areas: all of them were taken on August 26, 1941 (3 Elul 5701) to the Deguciai Forest and were brutally murdered there. Despite their good relations with their non-Jewish neighbors, not a single Jew of Turmantas survived. After the war, a monument was erected on the mass grave.